Poll: 81% of NYers support protests

Seventy-one percent of the city’s registered voters think protesters should be allowed to demonstrate in Central Park during the Republican National Convention, and 11 percent plan to go to a demonstration themselves, according to a poll released Aug. 23.

81 percent approve of lawful demonstrations during the convention, and 68 percent approve of nonviolent civil disobedience, the Quinnipiac University Poll found.

“The city is rolling out the red carpet for the Republican delegates, but most New Yorkers would roll out the green carpet of Central Park for the anti-Republican demonstrators,” Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

As for President Bush, the star of the event, 70 percent said they disapproved of the job he is doing, compared with 25 percent who approved, the poll said. The poll surveyed 822 New York City registered voters between Aug. 20 and Aug. 24 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. (AP)

Boston cops sitting on DNC arsenal

Armed to the teeth for a DNC disaster that never happened, Boston police are sitting on a weapons stockpile of stun grenades, projectile launchers, rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas.

The police department bought more than $160,000 worth of crowd-control firepower -- including nearly $14,000 worth of “Stinger” rubber-ball-and-tear-gas-spewing concussion grenades -- for a political shindig that saw only one minor scuffle with protesters and five related arrests.

Other security expenditures forwarded in the first reimbursement request included nearly $5,000 worth of military-style pants, bull horns, batteries, bolt cutters, thousands of gas-mask filters, lumber, high-tech radio systems and a $300,000 custom surveillance camera system.

City officials expect the federal government to reimburse the multimillion-dollar shopping spree out of an initial $24.8 million grant and a second one nearing final approval. Police have estimated the total bill including overtime at $35 million to $40 million.

Boston Chief Financial Officer Lisa Signori said the city can submit DNC expenses as frequently as monthly and hopes to have them all in by midfall.

One item not yet submitted for reimbursement is the $256,000 custom Lenco B.E.A.R. armored personnel transport the BPD rolled out with such fanfare before the DNC. (Boston Herald)

Iowa RNC convergence harassed by state

The Des Moines, Iowa anti-RNC convergence, loosely aligned to the anarchist group CrimethInc, has experienced state harassment in the lead-up to a planned Bush campaign stop prior to his Sept. 2 New York RNC appearance.

According to organizers, convergence participants charged for misdemeanor violations are now being held indefinitely. A local officer from the sherriff’s department was quoted as saying the arrests are being held as part of an “investigation into anarchism in Iowa.”

Materials that were to be used in workshops and skillshares mysteriously disappeared from the group’s campsite, including: lamp oil that was to be used for a fire-breathing skillshare and pvc pipe that was to be used in a home-made didjeridoo workshop.

Federal agents have detained an individual stating that someone called them saying that they saw people constructing a bomb, which organizers assert is entirely untrue.

Surveillance has been stepped up and is blatant.

“These intimidation tactics have disrupted our ability to openly meet and organize activism for the upcoming RNC protests in New York City,” said the group, who had been planning to travel to New York after their convergence. (A-Infos News Service)

Unions to knock on a million doors against Bush

As President Bush addresses the Republican National Convention on Sept. 2, 10,000 union members will go door-to-door to talk with a million union households about the jobs crisis, the need for affordable healthcare and a secure retirement - - and where the candidates stand on these issues. It will be the largest single-day election mobilization in the union movement’s history.

From Davenport, Iowa and St. Louis, Missouri to the coast of Maine and the mountains of the Northwest, nurses, cooks, steelworkers, teachers, office workers and others will fan out to conduct voter education with union members as part of the AFL-CIO’s Labor ’04 program.

“Despite the rosy rhetoric of the Republicans, the prolonged jobs crisis tears at the fabric of America’s middle class,” said John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO. “Never before have working people been so energized about an election. We’ve been overwhelmed by the number of volunteers who want to be out in their neighborhoods, talking to fellow union members while President Bush accepts his party’s nomination.”

The union members are volunteering their time with the AFL-CIO program through their local union and their local labor movement.

Union household members are expected to represent one out of four voters in November, as they did in the 2000 Presidential elections. (AFL-CIO)

Hundreds protest anti-union Starbucks

A rally in New York City Aug. 28 to protest Starbucks Coffee’s negative reaction to recent union organizing efforts ended with four arrests, including the detention of two Starbucks employees who are members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union branch 660 (IU 660).

Chanting “Union busting is disgusting,” about 400 protesters gathered at a midtown Starbucks and, proceeded to the Starbucks headquarters on the corner of the Empire State Building, and returned to the 36th street store.

The midtown store has been the center of a union organizing dispute between Starbucks and the IWW.

One of the two Starbucks workers arrested was Daniel Gross, 25, who has been vocal in the union organizing drive.

If workers at the 36th street Starbucks are successful in their organizing efforts, they will become the first unionized Starbucks in the country.

While resisting workers’ demands, Starbucks reported $4.2 billion in sales for the first half of 2004, a 28 percent increase over the same period last year. (NewStandard)